The next day, when I’d mailed the letter to Vivian Forster, I tried to put the incident from my mind. My vacation was what concerned me now.
In a week, however, Mrs. Forster wrote again.
My husband points out that there are different sorts of terminal illness. Jilly is dying in her own way. That’s why we believe you are needed here.
Julian also believes that you may have reached a crossroads in your life. Perhaps this is the right time for you to open up in some new direction—for your own good and development. Even though there may be some uncertainty and risk. I am not sure how he knows such things, but believe me, he does.
We would like to talk with you at least, and perhaps have you meet Jilly. Her mother is away—making a movie in California—so you would need to see neither of her parents. It is only the child who matters. Julian feels strongly that you are the one who can save her. Please don’t refuse. Don’t deny yourself.
This was a stronger letter than the first one, but still outrageous in what it asked. How had these people settled on me? Considering that my work was with children whose bodies were failing, why me? The fact that Jilly’s mother was the woman who had taken Stephen from me should have been enough to warn the Forsters off. So what twisted reasoning had prompted them to write?
Yet in spite of the way Mrs. Forster’s letter put me off, Julian Forster’s words touched me with their unexpected perception. How could he know that I had reached a crossroads? My skills needed honing and new experience to help me grow in my profession—but only I could know that. What could he have sensed just by watching me on a television program? I began to feel a certain curiosity about this man.
The closing lines of Mrs. Forster’s letter reached into some emotion that I’d thought was long buried and closed over.
Jilly is ten, with a mother too often away, and a father who no longer cares what happens to him or anyone else. Julian believes that you have a connection with this child—perhaps at a mystical level—and that you will come.
A mystical level? That was a bit wild. Not for a moment would I accept that I had any connection at all with these people in Virginia. Certainly I had seen such unhappy children, abandoned because their parents didn’t know how to deal with their own problems and pain. Sometimes parents might oversacrifice, or sometimes they simply ran away from what they couldn’t handle or face.
But this, surely, was a different situation. It was not the child, but the father who was damaged. Though I found it hard to imagine Stephen Asche without courage—a man who had lost his exuberant appetite for life. I’d read the newspaper accounts of his accident. He was noted enough by this time to make a few headlines. A year ago he had suffered a terrible fall at a construction site for which he had been the architect for some condos. His back had been broken and he was in a coma for weeks. When he came out of that phase, he’d been left a helpless invalid, his work and his life destroyed. There had been something in the original reports that I couldn’t remember—something about another man who had died at the same time as Stephen’s accident, though few details had been given. I had expected that Meryl might write about what had happened, but I hadn’t heard from her since, and I’d really been just as glad for her silence.
Of course I had grieved all over again for the young Stephen I’d loved, but I recognized fully that he didn’t exist anymore, just as the girl who had married him no longer existed. Yet this man, Julian Forster, who knew nothing about me, and had never met me, could reach out in some strange way because Jilly Asche and I were, in a sense, two of a kind. We’d both been abandoned, betrayed, by Stephen and Oriana. For me there had been time to recover, but Jilly had lost her father only a year ago, at the time of the accident.
For a week I postponed making a decision. Then I gave in because I couldn’t help myself. I wrote Mrs. Forster that I would drive down, stay overnight and for one day. Just long enough to see if there was any advice I could offer. That was all I could promise. This was to be the start of my vacation time, and I needed most of it for myself.
My meager response was accepted a little too eagerly by Vivian Forster and I found myself committed. On the day agreed upon, I left early in the morning, with my suitcase, packed for a vacation, in the trunk of the car, as well as a tote bag. The drive was a long one, and I broke it up with several stops, so that I wasn’t too tired when I arrived in the late afternoon.
The miles from Charlottesville to Nelson County were all too familiar and the countryside seemed almost unchanged. I remembered the clustering irregularity of small mountains—foothills to the Blue Ridge. The “Ragged Mountains” that Edgar Allan Poe had once written about when he’d attended—briefly—the University of Virginia. I found the side road I used to take with Stephen—gravel that wound upward through woods of oak, maple, poplar and various evergreens. And, of course, dogwoods. Strange that the month was early November, close to the season it had been when I’d last visited this mountain. The day was warm for fall and the bright red of the dogwood trees broke my heart a little. All this beauty was so much a part of the dream I’d shared with Stephen, and I’d begun to feel that it was stupid of me to come. Nevertheless, I’d been drawn by some pull I couldn’t deny. Perhaps some need to open old wounds that had never fully healed and let out the festering.
Suddenly the house was there, emerging around a bend in the climbing road. I wasn’t ready for it and I ran past the driveway and parked my car on the grassy shoulder. I didn’t want to announce myself at once. First, I needed to face whatever waited for me here, and make sure I could control my own emotions. I’d been so foolishly sure that I was “cured” and could handle all this.
The path to the top was more overgrown than I remembered, though I was able to follow it easily as it wound up the last rise of the mountain. When it ended, I climbed a farther hillock where I could stand clear of surrounding trees and look down upon a house that was so vividly clear in my mind that I knew every detail—even though I had been gone from Virginia for many months by the time it was built.
Everything seemed almost exactly as Stephen had sketched it in those preliminary plans—as he had imagined it on paper and made it come to life for me. Below me the structure followed the contour of the hill, gray and low, built of cypress and mountain stone. It suited the mountain, as Stephen had intended. Terraced roofs rose in graduated segments from a long, curving base, and I recognized all of it in every detail! Even the solar panels on the topmost level were as Stephen had planned.
There was one innovation. On the far side of the house from where I stood, a small summer gazebo had been built on a promontory. Its wood matched the main house, and it occupied the edge of a precipice that dropped straight down the mountain. Its sides were open and I could see benches within—an eyrie for an eagle, though Stephen could no longer take flight.
The Forsters’ apartment, as I knew from Vivian’s last letter, occupied this end of the lower living area, with Stephen’s rooms on the same level at the farthest point where the hill curved back. Now an outside ramp followed from deck to deck—an accommodation, undoubtedly, for a wheelchair that had never been intended in the original plans.
The second floor, smaller than the one below, probably held the guest apartment, library, and other rooms Stephen had allowed for. However, it was the top segment that drew my unhappy attention. That was to have been our place.
I could see glass doors where shadows grew long and a glint of vermilion reflected from the lowering sun. A plane had crossed the sky, and the lower point of the jet stream caught the sunset in its flying ribbon of strawberry pink. The entire encircling view was visible from this high place, as Stephen had intended. Not only would sunset and sunrise be visible here, but moonlight as well.
For an instant pain twisted inside me as I remembered—too much. When we’d first found this place we’d stayed one evening to catch a half moon floating over the mountains. A moon partly hidden by mists that changed its color from gold to hazy white a
s we watched, and a whimsical notion had come to me.
“Let’s call it House of the White Moon!” I said to Stephen.
He kissed me, not minding the sentimentality. “Fine! House of the White Moon it shall be.”
So what did they call it now, I wondered?
I tried to thrust memory away and continued to study this structure that I knew so well and had never seen before.
Wide overhangs shielded the rooms from sun and rain. Outside the glass doors of this top section, the space was to have been used for flower boxes, miniature trees, and plants enough for a roof garden. It didn’t look as though anyone had bothered with such plantings for a long time. In fact, the entire top of the house appeared dark and empty, though lights shone in windows below.
The shock of reality was so much worse than I’d expected. I had thought myself strong enough to face the past, and I was unprepared for the mixture of anger, resentment, jealousy, and just plain grief that swept through me in a shattering wave. I had to get myself in hand and do so quickly, so that I could go down to the front door and make my arrival known to the Forsters.
However, when I started down to the path from this high place, I stopped abruptly. A small girl of about ten sat crosslegged on a rock not far away. She hadn’t been there a moment before, and she watched me with solemn, gray-green eyes that somehow seemed a little blank. She was a thin child, delicately built, the contour of her chin softly rounded, her small nose yet to find its potential. Both eyes and mouth were a softer version of Stephen’s. Once I’d loved that little half-moon quirk at one corner of Stephen’s mouth, that showed when he was about to burst into laughter. Jilly’s lips pressed into a straight line, with no promise of mirth—the “quirk” only a parenthesis. Long black hair floated over her shoulders, held at each temple by a gold bar. There was no mistaking the hair—it was like Oriana’s. The child was enchantingly beautiful—or would have been if any hint of animation had touched her face.
I spoke to her quietly. “Hello. I’m Lynn McLeod. And you must be Jilly Asche?”
She stood up without curiosity, without expression—merely looking at what confronted her. Her dress seemed oddly old-fashioned for a child—a challis print of tiny blue flowers that fell to her ankles when she stood. At her throat a prim white collar was pinned with a cameo, adding to the quaint touch. Long sleeves with lace at the cuffs reached to her wrists.
She said, “Hello,” grudgingly, and for an instant an unaccountable look of fear seemed to touch the child’s eyes and tremble at the corner of her mouth—only to be wiped out at once by that stoical blankness. Apparently a stranger was to be feared, and I wondered why.
I spoke again, matter-of-factly. “I’ve come to see Mrs. Forster. She’s expecting me. Can you tell me if there is a short way down to the front door?”
Another child might have asked why I’d climbed to this hilltop in the first place, but she merely raised an arm and pointed. I saw that a small rustic bridge with log railings crossed the gully below, reaching the second level of the house.
“Thank you, Jilly,” I said. “I’ll take that way down. I hope I’ll see you again.”
I looked down toward the narrow bridge to examine my approach, and when I turned back, the rock where the child had stood was empty, and no long blue gown showed among the trees. She hadn’t run noisily away—she’d simply disappeared as quietly as if she were part of the wreathing mist that had begun to creep along the hillside.
All of my instincts were alert. Jilly Asche was a frightened little girl, and I wanted to know why.
As I descended toward the bridge, a voice called to me from a lower deck of the house.
“Hi, there! You’re Lynn McLeod, aren’t you? I’m Vivian Forster.” The voice was light, musical, with the hint of a cultured Virginia accent, pleasing to the ear.
I looked over the bank where I stood and saw that a woman had walked out upon an extension of the second level. Mrs. Forster seemed younger than I had expected—perhaps in her early forties, only a few years older than Stephen, her stepson. Larry Asche must have married a young wife. Her blond hair was piled on her head in becomingly curly disarray, with a lock falling across one cheek, and short tendrils touching her forehead—all rather appealing and unaffected. Her white pants were well tailored, and topped by a forest green cardigan with a design of pink seashells woven into the wool. Though her smile seemed open and friendly, I sensed an uneasiness as well, and was all the more alert after the child’s fear.
“Do come down,” she called. “I saw your car on the road, and I’ll have your bags brought up. We’ve put you here on the second floor—I was just looking to see if everything is right.”
I crossed the little bridge, my shoes clicking over the boards, and Vivian Forster held out her hand. Her handclasp was warm, though she spoke almost breathlessly, as though she must rush into words in order to conceal whatever it was that troubled her. Was this going to be a frightened household for some reason that might affect me?
She spoke to someone in the garden below. “Sam, please bring Miss McLeod’s bags up here, will you?”
Apparently my arrival had been observed, but not interfered with. If I’d wanted to delay my approach to the house, that fact had been accepted. Perhaps with understanding of how difficult this might be for me.
“Thank you for coming,” Mrs. Forster went on as I joined her. “Let’s be Lynn and Vivian, if you don’t mind. I hate standing on formality and I hope we’ll be friends.”
She opened a sliding glass door along the deck and beckoned me inside.
“This is our guest suite. The library—my husband’s study, really—is down the hall, but you’ll be quite private here. I’m sorry Julian isn’t home to greet you. He needed to do an errand in Charlottesville.”
Vivian Forster’s tone and manner seemed to assume quiet possession of this house that she must have lived in from the beginning, when she was married to her first husband, Larry Asche. Clearly, Stephen was no longer its master, and where Oriana came in I couldn’t tell.
I remembered this suite from Stephen’s plans, and now the rooms became three-dimensional. Again reality hurt. I must remember that I was a stranger and this was a house I visited for the first time. Any weak, inner qualms had to be suppressed.
Underfoot was soft beige carpeting. Carpet, sofa, chairs and lamps of the guest suite all seemed of no particular distinction. Probably none of this had been done in Stephen’s more robust taste, if his father and stepmother had moved in early.
“In a moment I’ll leave you to rest,” Vivian said. “You’ve had a long drive. We’ll have dinner around seven, so there’ll be time. We like to dispense with servants as much as possible, so I’m the cook. That’s something I like to do. When you’re ready to come down, you’ll find stairs toward the center of this floor, just before you come to Julian’s study.”
“I know,” I said, forgetting that I’d meant to be a stranger.
Vivian was silent for a moment, perhaps embarrassed. “Of course. I’m sorry. Julian said it wouldn’t be easy for you to come here. I must be honest and admit that at first I was against your coming. I’m still not sure what you can do, but Julian wanted it so much, and I wouldn’t oppose him.”
“Could we sit down for a few minutes?” I asked. “I’d like to ask some questions before you leave me.”
“Of course.” Vivian sat down gracefully at one end of the sofa, crossing her white trousered knees. I sat a little stiffly at the other end.
“I saw Jilly just now,” I told her. “She was up on the hill watching me, and she pointed out the bridge. For some reason she seemed almost afraid of me.”
Vivian nodded and soft fair tendrils fell onto her forehead. “Jilly’s afraid of everything. She’s in desperate need of help, but I’m not sure she can find it here.”
“Why should the sight of me alarm her?”
“I’m afraid I slipped up and told her someone was coming who might be able to help her. I sh
ould have known that would put her off. In a strange way, she doesn’t want help from anyone. Though she was a perfectly normal, happy little girl before her father’s accident.”
“What is she afraid of?”
Vivian’s hesitation before she answered suggested that she might be less than open.
“We’re not sure, but whatever happened stems from the time when her father was hurt. We couldn’t explain this to you in a letter, but the experience of seeing him fall must have frightened her in some awful way. She was alone with him—at the site where new mountaintop condos were being built. Stephen had designed them and he was keeping an eye on the construction. So he took Jilly there one Sunday to see the place.”
Vivian broke off, shivering.
“It would have been terrible for her to see her father hurt,” I said.
“Yes. She was helpless to do anything to rescue him. Two exploring schoolboys found them and went for help. Ever since that time, Jilly has had nightmares. She was so upset that we had to take her out of school and bring in private care and tutoring for her at home. I’m afraid it’s not been too successful.”
Vivian’s voice had risen slightly, and I sensed something more than anxiety for Jilly. She expressed this in her next words.
“I don’t feel that Julian and I should have to take on the responsibility for the child, when she has a father and a mother. It might be better right now if she could be sent to a special school until the emotional situation here has improved.”
This might all be true, and I found myself growing impatient with Stephen and Oriana, who were clearly neglecting their daughter.
“What about Everett and Meryl?” I asked. “I should think Stephen’s brother could help.”
“Everett’s impossible! He really isn’t good for Stephen right now. Meryl does what she can, but that isn’t much.”
“Doesn’t Stephen take any interest in his own daughter?”
The Singing Stones Page 2
